Titan's Curse AU
by dukeofpoorplanning
Summary: An alternate opening to Titan's Curse that could have gone in one of two very different directions. See AN for explanation. This story will never be updated.


**I do not, in any way, shape, or form, own Percy Jackson and the Olympians. In case you were wondering, I don't own Heroes of Olympus, either, shockingly enough.**

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><p>I swear my mom must hate me. Which is a real shame, because she's really pretty cool. For a parent, anyways.<p>

Normally, I wouldn't say that mom hates me at all. Really, she's probably the best parent ever, but as soon as she gets nervous . . . well, for her, nervous means talkative, and talkative means embarrassing baby stories.

And really, whether or not I ever tried to eat a bar of soap thinking that it was candy bar isn't any of Annabeth's or Thalia's businesses.

I know Grover needs our help, something about a demigod being watched by a monster, but the six hours it took us to drive to his new school (in Maine. What New Yorker goes to school in Maine?) were about as fun as an afternoon in Hades.

And I would know.

"Is this it?" I asked loudly. And no, I wasn't trying to interrupt my mom's story. Well, I was, but I really did see the building where we were meant to meet Grover. And what a building it was.

It was pretty tall, about five floors, but more impressive than that, it was just plain massive. Each floor was about the size of a city block, and considering that it was on the edge of a cliff and ringed by a forest, it looked even bigger than it really was.

Oh, and it was a castle. Why can't _I_ go to school in a castle? Then again, the fact that it's a military school pretty much cancels out the cool factor of the castle. I guess my school's pretty okay, after all.

"I _hope_ it is," Thalia replied. "Grover said there aren't any other buildings for miles."

"Thanks, Thalia," Annabeth chimed in.

"I'm here to help."

"That's it," my mom confirmed, clearly hoping to prevent an argument. Considering who she was in the car with, not likely. "I followed the instructions exactly." While she was talking, mom stopped the car in front of the school.

"Cool, well, we should get going. Thanks for the ride!" Alright, that was cold. I admit it. But hey, you try spending six hours listening to your mom telling two of your best friends all about what a cute baby you were and see how you feel.

My mom, of course, saw right through me. "Are you sure you'll be okay?"

It's really hard to hold a grudge against her when she does her "worried parent who just wants to make sure her only son and his friends will be okay, but they all put themselves in so much danger, and its so hard to watch them go" routine. I can _feel_ my annoyance going away.

"You know better than to worry, mom," I lied.

"I guess I do," she lied back. I'm not sure why we even bother anymore; we see right through each other.

"Thank you, Mrs Jackson," Annabeth said politely.

"Yeah, thanks," Thalia added.

My mom waited until we had closed the door to pretend to drive off. Really, though, she just drive far enough so that we won't hear the engine. She probably wouldn't leave for another hour, just in case we needed anything.

As soon as we stepped into the school, we were greeted by a series of very aggressive hugs and, in my case, a high five that just my hand stinging for the rest of the evening. "Thank gods you made it!" Grover bleated in between greetings.

We caught up for a few minutes in the entrance . . . room. I didn't really know what to call it, actually. Annabeth probably would, not that I'm stupid enough to ask her. I know better than anyone that when she starts talking about architecture, she has no idea when to stop.

After the usual "how have you been?" "good, but I miss camp; people here look at me funny when I eat tinfoil," we got to the reason he had called us here. Which had better be really good after the day I've had. Besides, I'd been hoping to have a quiet Christmas at home, and the break _just _started.

Not that I resented Grover for calling us out to the middle of nowhere. And that wasn't sarcasm, believe it or not. It was kinda pretty out here, afterall. Pretty much a winter wonderland, what with the light snowfall and all.

"There's two of them," Grover said, pulling me from my thoughts.

"Two?!" Annabeth and Thalia exclaimed in unison. Now that got me interested. Nowadays, finding _one_ halfblood was rare enough, even with all the satyrs working overtime, but two at once . . .

"Yeah," Grover confirmed grimly. "Siblings."

"Twins?" I asked. Not because it really mattered. I just liked CSI-y banter.

"No, the sister's three years older."

"So it's a boy and a girl. Do they know?"

Grover shook his head. "You know how it is."

"The more they know, the more they smell," Thalia, Annabeth, and I chorused. Which was true, as stupid as it sounds: the more a demigod knows or suspects, the easier it is for monsters to find and kill them. Of course, knowing more makes it easier to defend ourselves, too, so it's kind of a gamble either way.

As we discussed the two demigods had been sent to collect (Bianca and Nico di Angelo), we failed to notice two adults, probably teachers, come into the room, disapproving frowns already in place.

One was a man, about six feet tall and dressed in all black. His face was heavily scarred, and his teeth looked more like fangs. Lovely.

The other, a woman, looked normal (thankfully). She was barely over five feet tall, making them a rather odd pair, and dressed more normally in red and green. 'Tis the season, right?

"You three don't go here," the man said with a heavy French accent.

While I was trying to decide whether to bluff or threaten my way into the school, Thalia stepped forward and snapped her fingers. "Yes we do," she said, giving the pair a winning smile. How she pulled off an innocent look with teachers at military school while wearing clothes and makeup that could only be described as punk, I'll never know.

The woman's eyes glazed over and when she next spoke, her voice was dreamy. "Of course you do. Off to the dance, then."

The man, though, just narrowed his eyes at Thalia. Whatever she did, it clearly didn't do anything for him.

I, however, paled slightly. "_Dance?_" I hissed at Grover.

"Why do you think I told you guys to dress up?" he whispered back. Sure enough, I was wearing a black suit and tie, Annabeth was wearing a silver dress, and Thalia . . . was wearing whatever Thalia wore. But that's not the point. A _dance?_

Sometimes, just sometimes, I _really_ hate my friends.

While we made our way to the gym where the dance was (why a castle as big as this one didn't have a ballroom or anything is beyond me), I fell into step with Thalia. "What'd you do back there? With the finger snap?"

She turned and raised an eyebrow at me. "You mean Chiron hasn't taught you that yet?"

I'm sure she didn't _mean_ to annoy me, but . . . actually, considering it's Thalia, I'm really _not_ sure.

While I was considering the ups and downs of trying to beat the information out of her, Grover kept leading us down the hall. Pushing open a set of double doors (what an entrance, right?) he turned to us, grinning, and said, "welcome, lord and ladies, to our humble soiree."

Humble wasn't the word I'd use. All of the boys, Grover included, were wearing tuxes (I suddenly felt underdressed, not that I'd ever admit it), the girls were all wearing dresses that wouldn't have looked out of place in a Disney movie. Thalia was the only person in the room _not_ dressed like she was at a wedding.

"Last day of school?" I asked Grover grimly.

He gave me an evil grin. "Believe it, Perce."

Great. As if a junior high dance weren't bad enough, a junior high dance at a military school on the last day of school before Christmas vacation. Fantastic. These kids were probably less than an hour away from blowing the building up from their collective excitement.

"We should split up," Annabeth said before I could murder Grover. I was seriously considering it, too. "The three of us together will attract way too much attention."

"Mingle and confuse it?" Thalia asked.

I assume she means whatever monster was stalking the demigods that Grover completely failed to mention. Cool. It must be a pretty bad one, too, if he called all three of us out here.

"Maybe we should stick together," I suggested hopefully. I was eyeing a group of girls who were giggling madly as they stalked towards some poor kid standing alone. They circled around him, laughing maniacally until they decided he had enough. By the time they stepped away, he was covered in makeup and looking like he wanted to drop dead. I felt myself shift closer to Annabeth. "Strength in numbers, right?"

Thalia rolled her eyes at me. "They won't bite, Percy," she said, following my gaze to the evil girls. Considering how much they looked like a pack of piranha, I found that an odd choice of words. "C'mon, Goatboy," she added, dragging Grover onto the dancefloor. I would have felt bad for him if he hadn't landed me in this situation.

Annabeth smirked at me and walked off to mingle, calling over her shoulder, "it won't kill you to spend an evening as a normal teenager, Seaweed Brain."

Have I mentioned that I sometimes hate my friends? Because that bit's important.

I frowned after her, but I couldn't really argue that we should split up. I wandered over to the refreshment table, hoping to go through the evening without any fights to the death or dancing, which is almost as bad. If we could just collect the di Angelos and escape the school (hopefully without meeting whatever monster was hanging out here), I'd be happy.

Yeah, as if.

"I don't think I've ever seen you here before," a girl (thankfully alone) said, sidling up to me. "What class are you in?"

I turned to look at her, and was just barely able to stop myself from blushing like a complete idiot. She was actually really pretty what with her black eyes and hair and olive skin. She kind of reminded me of someone, but I couldn't quite remember who.

Then I realised that I hadn't answered her question. The way I saw it, I had two choices: bluff until she believed that I went to the school, or bluff until she believed that I had been allowed to come to the dance as a special guest. Easy choice really: lie about something she knew about and I didn't, or lie about something neither of us did.

"I don't go here," I told her. "Grover Underwood invited me."

"I didn't know we could invite kids from other schools," she said. Her voice was light, but I'd _swear_ she was trying to get at something. Weird.

"Well, um, the thing about that is," as I was stammering out an answer to her implied question, the song that was playing changed to what I was barely able to recognise as a waltz. (Un)fortunately for me, my mom taught me how to waltz (something about it being a skill a proper hero should have. I was too busy trying to escape to listen to what she was saying at the time), so I tried the only distraction I could think of.

"Do you want to dance?" Man I hoped I wasn't blushing. Or at least that, if I was, she would assume that it was because I was asking her to dance, not because I couldn't answer her question. Which was the reason I was blushing. The second one, not the first.

She looked at me for a moment before agreeing, and I surprised myself (and probably her as well) by actually keeping up with the dance. Hoping to distract her from her own line of questioning, I went on the offensive. And Annabeth said that looking at conversations like they were swordfights was stupid.

"I'm Percy," I said, hoping that she would take this as her cue to introduce herself as well. If I had to, I could always ask her about the school, and I could probably even tell the truth about anything she asked me about mine. This might work out afterall.

Of course it didn't.

"I'm Bianca," she replied. Well great. I'd found one of the siblings, but I had no idea where the other was, and even if I did, we didn't have a plan to get them out of the school. Seems kind of stupid of us, now that I think about it.

I tried to keep my expression neutral (and failed miserably) as we danced past another couple, which included a girl with very recognisably blond hair. I wanted to get a message to Annabeth, but I couldn't think how without losing track of Bianca, which would defeat the purpose.

While my face went from surprised to calculating to blank, Bianca watched in confusion. After I went a moment without saying anything past the introductions, she did exactly what I wanted for her to _not_ do.

"So where do you go to school?" she asked, if only to break the uncomfortable silence.

"New York," I replied, still thinking about what to do.

"Then why come all the way out here for a dance?"

"Well, my school got out a few days ago, and I haven't seen Grover in a while, so he asked me to come." All technically true, which is the best kind of true. "I didn't have anything else to do, so I agreed." Also pretty much true: I had been looking forward to a quiet break without any monster fighting.

"How come he was allowed to invite a student from another school?" she asked, eyes narrowing in suspicion.

"Why is anyone allowed to do anything?" I asked. Stupid? Yes. But I was having a harder time than normal coming up with lies, and I don't usually have a very easy time with it in the first place. "Oh, hey, look at that! Why's that kid being dragged out?"

There actually was a boy being dragged out of the gym, looking pretty terrified, by the teacher with the French accent.

Bianca looked towards the door, despite my obvious attempt to distract her, and sighed. "That's my little brother. Nico's always getting in trouble with the teachers. I wonder what it is this time?"

"Oh, good," I muttered. "Listen, Bianca. I should really go take care of that. You stay here, alright? And maybe try to look for one of the friends I came here with. One's got blond hair and grey eyes, the other's dressed weird; you can't miss her."

"Wait, what are-" but I let go of her hand and rushed off towards the door before she could finish, pulling a normal looking ballpoint pen out of my pocket as I went. The second I was out of the gym, I used my thumb to push the cap off, making it grow into a bronze sword instantly.

I ran forward, looking for the boy or the teacher. After about five minutes of searching (it would have been easier if I had ever been in the building before) I found the boy outside by the front doors, cowering in fear.

I lowered my sword as I approached. "Nico?" I called, more to let him know that I was there than anything else. "Nico? It's alright. I'm here to help you."

Before he could say anything (if he could talk at all, he might've been too terrified), another voice spoke up. "Ah, Perseus Jackson. So good of you to join us." I'd swear that French accent is fake. And how cliche can you _get?_ I mean seriously, "_so good of you to join us?_" He might as well have said "prepare to die."

I turned slightly to see the teacher who pulled Nico out of the dance slowly advancing on us from a side chamber. I raised my sword again, this time pointing it at him. "Normally I'd call pulling a boy from a school dance a good thing, but something tells me you didn't do it out of the goodness of your heart."

"No indeed. Let us continue this discussion outside, yes?"

I took another step towards him, sword ready to strike at any point. "Why would I agree to that?"

He smirked at me, and, after a blur of motion that I couldn't follow, a small black spike embedded itself in the door less than an inch from Nico's face, flying through the air so fast I could barely see it. "I won't miss again," he told me smugly.

I stood still for a second, screaming at Grover to grab Annabeth and Thalia and head to the front of the school through our empathy link, before I reluctantly put the pen's cap on the end of my sword's blade and returned it to my pocket, now back in pen form. "Let's make this quick," I said, walking slowly towards the door without taking my eyes off the teacher.

I grabbed Nico's shoulder and gave it what I hoped was an encouraging squeeze before backing out of the door, pulling Nico along with me. At some point while we were inside, the snow and winds both picked up, to the point that it was kind of hard to see. The teacher followed us, making sure to keep a distance of ten feet. He didn't bother to close the door after him, and I didn't bother to point it out. Why should _I_ care about the school's heating bill?

I came to a stop about twenty feet away from the front doors, still facing the teacher who I was now sure was some kind of monster. I pulled Nico behind me and glared at him (the monster, not the kid).

"So what do I call you?" I asked, more to stall than out of any genuine curiosity.

"I have been using the alias of Doctor Thorn while at this school," he replied conversationally, as though we had all the time in the world for a friendly chat.

"Never heard a monster with a French accent before. How old are you?"

"Bah! I am older than most. I have spent the last several centuries in France, enjoying the climate and cuisine."

"Yeah?" I asked. "Then what brings you all the way to the New World, Thorn?" I had a pretty good idea, but I wanted to be sure. Nico tried to poke his head out, but I gently pushed him so that I was between him and Thorn again.

"What else, Jackson, but the Great Stirring?"

"What indeed?" I asked, even though I had absolutely no idea what he was talking about. Better to keep stalling him: the entire conversation, I hadn't once stopped trying to contact Grover through our empathy link, though I was starting to lose hope that he would get the message.

_Five more minutes,_ I thought to myself. _If they're not here in five minutes, I'm going for it._

I reached into my pocket and stealthily took my pen out, though I didn't uncap it.

"You fool, Jackson. Do you even know what the Great Stirring _is_?"

"Something that's great and stirs?" I asked. Something about the way he asked the question told me that I wasn't going to get my full five minutes.

Thorn sighed. "I don't see what all the fuss over you is about, Jackson. Honestly, _why_ is the the general so interested in you and your little friend?"

"Which friend? What general?" I asked sharply.

Thorn ignored my questions, obviously. "I know I was under orders to deliver you alive with the two brats, but I think I'll be better served by killing you here and now. Goodbye, Jackson."

"Get to the forest," I hissed at Nico. "Don't come out until I or another kid tells you to." Maybe it was irresponsible to tell him to listen to kids in general, but I didn't have time to explain about Annabeth, Grover, and Thalia. This was just faster.

As Nico began to hurry off to the woods by the school, I uncapped my pen, allowing it to grow back into a sword in my hand. The blade gave off a slight glow that, in the dark night, seemed ten times brighter than normal.

Before Nico could make it very far, I saw another flash of movement near Thorn (_behind_ him) and other spike shot out, again headed for Nico. Without thinking, I moved to intercept it; though it only grazed my right shoulder, it was nearly enough to make me drop my sword in pain.

I grabbed my right shoulder, which was bleeding slightly, with my left hand, still holding my sword with my right, and stared at Thorn. "I've never seen a poison like this before: one that only causes pain. Where'd you get it?"

Thorn grinned evilly at me. "It builds up in my body naturally, over time."

"That's a relief," I told him sincerely. "I'd hate for this stuff to go to mass market."

"Indeed. Such a shame it would be for lesser beings to use _my_ poison."

"Lesser beings? You talk like a _god._ You may be good, but you're not _that_ good." As someone who once _dueled_ a god, I was kind of offended.

Thorn smiled at me. "Shall we see?"

While the two of us were talking, Nico was hurrying off to the forest. Thorn seemed to have forgotten all about him, which would make my life easier. Probably. I still had no idea what kind of monster Thorn was, and unless I found a way to close the gap between us fast, I was in trouble.

I stopped calling out to Grover entirely and focused on the snow that was falling all around us. It stopped falling and floated around Thorn, who was watching it wearily. Good thing I practiced controlling snow all last winter.

While Thorn was concentrating on the snow, probably wondering what I was going to do with it, I began walking towards him slowly, hoping that he wouldn't notice. I only got about three feet before he saw what I was doing and launched three more spikes at me. We were still seven feet apart, way too far for me to do any real damage.

My control over snow is just good enough for me to direct it; I can't actually use it to attack, so I can mostly only use it as a distraction, like I'd just done with Thorn. No way I could pull off the same bluff twice, so my only option was to close the distance between us, but that would be hard if he insisted on using those damn spikes.

As the next three spikes flew towards me, I felt their paths through the air, the same way I can sense water currents when I'm underwater. Using that, I sidestepped the first, ducked under the second, and cut the third out of the air. As Thorn launched more spikes at me, I continued to advance slowly. When I was only five feet away, he began to transform.

He dropped onto his hands and feet, his body thickening and lengthening. His back sprouted a pair of batlike wings and his hair grew into a mane. As he threw more spikes at me, I finally saw how he was doing it: his tail was covered in the damn things, and every time he chucked one at me, it was immediately replaced with a new one. I've always wanted to fight a manticore.

And by always, I mean never.

When we were only three feet apart, he pounced at me, launching five more spikes as he did. I dove to the right, avoiding Thorn but landing in the path of three of the spikes. I managed to cut one out of the air and duck under the second, but the third grazed my left cheek. For the second time that night, my right shoulder exploded in pain. I guess the poison must have worked so that it always worked on the first place it hit.

I barely reacted in time when Thorn threw himself at me, trying to bite my arm off. I rolled to the left and stabbed him in his side, just next to his ribcage. Thorn bellowed in pain and leaped forward before spinning around to face me. I climbed to my feet unsteadily, grabbing my right shoulder again.

"You will die slowly," Thorn promised me. After the evening I'd had, I kind of agreed.

Before he could do more than taunt me, though, I heard something that made my heart skip a beat. Helicopter blades. Normally, there wouldn't be anything about that sound that made me nervous, but out here in the middle of nowhere? I'd never thought of monsters using mortal technology before, but what other reason could there be for a helicopter to come all the way out here at almost 9:00 at night?

Thorn seemed to agree, because he smiled at me and returned to his human form and pulled out something too small for me to tell what it was. He put it to his face and began talking into it, too quietly for me to hear. He turned back to me and smiled. "This is where it ends, Jackson."

Before I could give some clever response to that, something like a spotlight turned on, aimed straight at me. I couldn't see anything for a few seconds, but I could hear something like a gunblast and feel something that reminded me of Thorn's . . . thorns coming at my head. Without thinking, I slashed my sword upwards, cutting a bullet, aimed straight at my forehead, out of the sky before I'd even seen it.

Before I could do much more than marvel at how insanely cool that was, and how terrifying it was that a monster had apparently hired a sniper to take me out, I heard Thorn shout something. Turning, I saw Annabeth with her knife in his neck, her Yankees cap on the ground at their feet.

Her cap makes her invisible, by the way. Kind of explains how she managed to sneak up on Thorn.

Out of nowhere, Thalia appeared next to me, holding up her shield over us, just in time to block a barrage of bullets that must have been fired from a something pretty heavy duty.

"Thanks," I muttered, grabbing my shoulder again.

"Don't thank us yet, Kelp Face," she replied grimly.

Behind us, Thorn was thrashing around, somehow not dead despite have had a celestial bronze knife stuck in his neck. Annabeth yanked her knife out of his back, where she had stabbed him again, and leaped away.

I closed my eyes and concentrated on the falling snow. I redirected as much as I could towards to helicopter's blades, slowing them down. It wasn't enough to make them crash, thank the gods, but it _did_ force them to land before they did.

Thorn launched three more spikes at us. I pressed a button on my wristwatch, a gift from my half-brother, and my own shield spiraled out to block them. With the two of us standing back to back and each with a shield raised, Thalia and I were basically untouchable from a distance.

Thorn probably realized that, because he shifted his attention back to Annabeth. He launched five spikes at her, all of which she dodged, though she barely managed to avoid the last two. I was about to run over to her when a silver arrow shot out of the woods towards Thorn. He jumped out of the way, but a volley of arrows followed the first. Thorn bellowed in pain as his entire right side was peppered with arrows.

Whoever was firing seemed happy with the damage they had caused, because nobody moved as Thorn staggered forward. Before anyone could react, he picked Annabeth up in his jaws and leaped over the side of the cliff, into the sea.

Thalia and I both dropped our shields and ran over to the cliff. Thalia stopped abruptly, but I dove over the edge. Or at least, I tried to. Someone, probably Thalia, caught my ankle and pulled me back up, shouting at me to calm down.

I'm guessing that whoever had caught me was pretty annoyed by my struggling to break out of their grip, because I felt a sharp blow to my neck, and next thing I knew, I was waking up in the woods near the school.

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><p><strong>AN: This really isn't my best work. Part of that is that I hadn't read Titan's Curse in forever when I wrote this, and part of it is that I didn't have a clear idea of where to go with this AU. I had two ideas: one where Percy holds Talos off long enough for the others to escape before being whisked off to Ogygia (which leads to Bianca surviving, Thalia trying to kill Luke, Annabeth taking the hit for him and dying in the process, and an eventual PercyBianca pairing), the other where Percy and Bianca spend the entire thing up to her eventual death flirting, which causes mucho sadness when she dies. That'd lead into a Percy/Rachel pairing in the larger scheme of things.**

**I'm not really invested in either story at the moment, so I don't expect that I'll be coming back to this. I'd say that this is up for adoption, but aside from Percy being more badass and the fight scene being (heavily) inspired by SAO II, there isn't really enough here to warrant my doing so. If anyone is interested in taking the ideas I described above and developing them into a story, feel free; just be a doll and shoot me a heads up first. I'm always looking for new stories to read, and I think that, in better hands than mine, either of those could be pretty interesting. So with all that said, happy holidays and thanks for reading! Duke out!**


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